Nyirenda said Tilire Phiri took her three children Chisomo, 10, Limbani 8 and Richard 4 on pretence that she wanted to get them mangoes from her garden a distance away from her home.

At the garden, Nyirenda alleged, she killed the children by hitting each one with a hoe handle.

“Villagers came to know about the murders when the violent Mrs Phiri returned home with her for year dead child. This is when they traced where she went and discovered the dead bodies of the other two children,” said Nyirenda.

He said Phiri, a single mother, was found with a health passport which indicated she suffered from a mental illness.

Nyirenda, however, said she would still be taken to hospital to find out if her killings were motivated by the mental illness.

A brother to the woman Charles Phiri told Mana that the woman has a history of mental illness and she could at at times show aggressive behaviour by throwing her kids especially when they were young on the ground but would later care for them very well.

“The kids have been staying with our mother (their grandmother) but on Wednesday Violet took the kids to the farm where one by one she knocked them on the head and hacked them and then carried one of the children to her house and covered her with a cloth,” he said.

Violet who had blood stains on her clothes narrated how she killed the three boys saying she had to do the ‘deed’.

The bodies of the three children are being kept at Mchinji District Hospital mortuary.

In a related development, minister of Gender Patricia Kaliati on Wednesday told women mourners at the funeral of slain housewife Grace Chipanda, 44 and her son Gift, 13, to speak out if they faced marital problems in their homes.

Grace and Gift were killed by husband Charles Chipanda, 52 who alleged his wife was flirting with another man.

Kaliati said women should not allow men to use force to resolve marital problems in their homes. She urged the women to be steadfast and decisive, saying the murder of Grace and her son should be a wake up calll for other oppressed women in oppressed families. Charles allegedly killed his wife and son with a pistol before turning the firearm on himself, killing himself. –Reporting by Owen Khamula, Nyasa Times and Sarah Munthali, Mana

The Doctors who diagnosed her mental condition should be reprimanded. Mentally ill patients are supposed to be monitored. What is her history, is it violent?. Where is the husband. Sometimes economic issues of a country are disguised as mental issues. In America, gun laws are blamed on mental illness. What’s the remedy prescribed in her health passport.